The Love of My Life (31 page)

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Lynnette insisted I stay with her and Sean. She made up the bed in the spare room and put a vase of flowers on the dressing table, bought me magazines and Lucozade and seedless grapes as if I were an invalid. She gave me Sean’s old laptop and told me to write it all down. She said it would be cathartic, and she was right.

Over the last few months, she and Sean have been gentle and kind and patient as saints. They make me drinks and sandwiches and ask me to help them with pleasant little chores: dead-heading the roses in the garden, painting the window-frames, sewing new cushion covers, that kind of thing. Lynnette tries to engage me in conversations about television programmes. She is addicted to documentaries about people buying old barns and disused shops and converting them into beautiful homes. Sean tries to make me laugh. He supplies me with strong drink and the sweet, familiar smell of roll-ups. While they are at work I write my confession and lie on my bed. Sometimes I walk on the common. The black dog of depression is with me at all times. I understand that it will stay until I am ready to be on my own.

I miss Chris and the café. I called him to explain why I had disappeared and he said he was just glad it wasn’t something he’d said. He made me laugh. He told me he missed me too and that one day he would come to London so I could show him the sights. Every so often he sends me a postcard with a recipe on the back. Lynnette and I follow the recipes but we have come to realize that neither of us will ever be any good at cooking.

I am trying to find a café where I will feel comfortably anonymous. In the park there is a lake, and in the middle of the lake is an island with a café that can only be reached via a little wooden footbridge. Swans, ducks and geese float underfoot, hoping for bread. I have noticed, lately, that there are tadpoles in the water too and the air has a thrill of spring about it, especially in the mornings.

The lake café looks promising. The chef is a woman with fleshy arms and dewlaps on her chin. She laughs a good deal and calls everyone ‘ducks’ and her huge breasts wobble when she puts my coffee down on the table. The café is a good place to read a library book and to look at flyers about art exhibitions and concerts and protests.

Stefano and Bridget and the children come round for Sunday lunch or else we are invited to their house. We talk about Luca a good deal, but we don’t mention Marc, only in passing. Stefano said that the family might have taken Luca’s grave from me and claimed it as their own, but that’s nothing because Luca’s heart will always belong to me. The time we had together, he and I, is sacred and safe. It sounds like another cliché, but I treasure it. We all drink too much, even Lynnette, and we get emotional and affectionate and put on rose-coloured spectacles in order to look back at our childhoods and our crossing paths.

The best news is that I have found a job. I start work this week. My previous experience as research assistant to the Professor of History at Watersford University stood me in good stead. It was accidental, of course, but I had been working on what was probably the highest-profile literary-history project of the decade. Outing Marian Rutherford as a lesbian has spawned a whole new genre of research. All her books are being reprinted, re-read and reinterpreted. Syllabuses are being adjusted to incorporate this latest slant on Miss Rutherford’s work.

The professor has left Watersford. It made sense for him to come to London, given the fact that he has been asked to research, produce and star in a television documentary on this very subject. He has asked me to be his research assistant because he knows how well we work together in our separate ways. I have accepted his offer.

And Luca?

Luca has died but he has not left me. He is in the blood that goes through my veins, he is in every thought that crosses my mind, he is in every footstep I take, every flower I pick, every bird, every leaf, every raindrop, every word, every colour, every fingerprint, every star, every dawn and every sunset.

He is in every breath and heartbeat.

Luca.

The love of my life.

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